Month: September 2013

KMET executive director, Monica Oguttu urged education stakeholders from Kisumu County to emulate the health sector by embracing public private partnership in order to promote access of quality basic education.

Speaking at Kisumu Imperial hotel during the launch of a school based mentorship manual, the director appealed to non-governmental institutions and the county government to work together in ensuring that vulnerable children in Kisumu Municipality are able to access and complete 9 years of basic education in ECDE and Primary schools.

The minister for education buttressed the plea admitting that challenges facing the education sector such as poor sanitation, pitiable situation of classrooms, overburdened teachers and lack of proper stimulation materials can only be solved through active partnerships.

“While we applaud KMET for the wonderful work they are doing in improving access to quality basic education, you realize KMET alone cannot solve all the education problems and we therefore cannot ignore public-private partnership”, added the minister.

Jack Ranguma, Kisumu county governor, through his representative Engineer James Rege, assured the stakeholders present at the launch that the county government was ready to support and be part of such noble partnerships.

The mentoring manual

KMET through its program: Active Inclusion of the Most Vulnerable Children in Education, launched a mentorship manual for use by volunteer mentors to improve school retention and completion rates among identified most vulnerable children (MVC) in primary schools.

The 50 volunteer mentors having been trained by KMET are expected to work along with parents or guardians to provide MVC with support, counsel, friendship, reinforcement and constructive examples.

19 school communities in 5 informal settlements within Kisumu are set to benefit from this program.

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Hundreds of Kaluo Village residents turned up to learn about sexual reproductive health during a community forum organized by KMET and Network of Adolescent and Youth of Africa (NAYA) a youth led advocacy organization.

Ezekiel Ojwang, Siaya District Reproductive Health Co-ordinator address community members at the opening of the forum

The forum held on Saturday 7th at Kaluo Dispensary attracted a mixed crowd of women and men of reproductive age, the youth and community leaders who also had access to free contraceptive and sexual reproductive health services.

Caroline Nyandant, KMET reproductive health coordinator said most of the women in the region would prefer long term contraceptive methods as a way of controlling birth but majority do not because of myths about contraceptives.

The youth also explored various contraceptive methods available for the sexually active, with majority saying they would settle for intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD) if they were to use any contraceptive method.

“Majority of young ladies say they would prefer IUCDs because they are non-hormonal. The uptake is however less popular since not all medical providers can insert the contraceptive,” said Adriano Ngaywa, KMET reproductive health programs officer.

Youth having their open forum in a separate setting from the elderly. Most youth admitted to not having known about long term contraceptive methods apart from depo injections

KMET has been working in partnership with the Ministry of health to train more health providers in Western Kenya to be able to offer long term contraceptive services- Kaluo Dispensary is such a beneficiary.

To ensure uptake of contraceptive services is heightened the organization works with youth peer providers who target young members of the society with information on correct and appropriate use of contraceptives as well as effects of unsafe abortion.

Boniface Otiema, a community health extension worker encouraged community health workers for the extensive work they do in the community to complement KMET endeavors which entails educating and referring men and women for health services at Kaluo facility.

Ministry of health officials who accompanied the team also sensitized the community members on the scope of family planning and how failure to embrace contraceptives spill into rising statistics of unsafe abortion in the region.